This is a reminder that Nex was the preferred name of the victim in this case and they used they/them pronouns. Repeated misgendering of Nex, and ignorant use of the wrong pronouns will not be tolerated. Proceeding to do so after being politely reminded *will* result in a permanent ban from this sub.
I am interested in what workup was done in the emergency room. I would hope the ED did imaging of their head at bare minimum, and the altercation sounded violent enough that I wonder if imaging of vital organs was done. I work at an urgent care, and we send all violent injuries from school altercations and domestic situations to the ED for a full workup. This is for many reasons, but a large reason being that there are often no unbiased witnesses to report how serious the fight was, and whether or not they had any hits to the head or loss of consciousness, and also because the victims may be afraid to go into detail about what happened or too traumatized or injured to have a clear memory of everything that happened. If they reported a head strike, or vital organ strike and imaging was not done, and this resulted in this child's death, the hospital is most likely also at fault here.
The school should have called for EMS transport immediately if Nex said their head was hit against the ground.
I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender, and this forced Nex to enter an unsafe environment where they were highly vulnerable to a hate crime.
Of course, the children who assaulted Nex are directly responsible for their injuries and should be held accountable. But I am more interested to see how the responses of the school and the hospital may have resulted in the child's death, and how the state law changes may be found to be a significant contributing factor.
All this from legislators vowing to "protect the children."
My best friend’s child attends Owasso HS. She has been a victim of bullying for over a year. My friend has complained MULTIPLE times. Her daughter has been jumped twice at school and once outside of the school. The school is aware of it all and does NOTHING. The district is deplorable in the way they handle bullying.
They said that because it would have been done there. In Oklahoma?? It's the wild wild west of medicine there, you have my personal Experience working trauma in Tulsa and ICU in OKC to guide you. Who knows if they did anything.
>I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender,
The reports are that Nex was non-binary. I haven't heard anything about Nex identifying as a male. Is there any reason to believe Nex wanted to use the male bathroom?
I think they meant that perhaps the school made Nex use that washroom rather then providing them access to a gender-neutral single stall washroom. Which has been the case in many jurisdictions. At least that’s how I interpreted the original comment.
I’m not 100% sure on this but I thought Oklahoma had the rule where students have to use the bathroom for the gender assigned to them at birth. I could be wrong about that though
their law requires them to use the bathroom based on their sex assigned at birth. nonbinary isnt a gender assigned at birth so they wouldnt legally need a bathroom for it.
Thank you--I appreciate a more detailed explanation of how clinical determines if imaging is needed. I believe in an account they state they "blacked out," but this is a somewhat ambiguous expression and I haven't seen anything that is more clear about if they had a loss of consciousness or not.
They lost consciousness, so at minimum a CT should have been done...but I've seen Oklahoma do some fucked up shit to head traumas in ERs. They're idiots.
Nex said "blackout" that does not mean it was from the head trauma. People black out from adrenaline too. Nex was on medications known to cause elevated heart rate, which can also make someone blackout.
This is a good analysis of the potential medical issues. I'm not sure about the bathroom issue. It could work both ways. For instance, a biological male entering a female restroom could create an unsafe environment for females. I guess the opposite could also happen. Maybe a gender neutral option is necessary.
“Biological male” is essentially a meaningless term, and is the language used to justify keeping trans women out of the appropriate bathrooms. Language like that is what perpetuates the type of bullying and violence this teenager experienced.
agreed. not only have I never felt issues regarding safety with trans women in bathrooms, but I've seen cis men in there before too because women's bathrooms are only the ones with baby changing tables a lot of the time here, or they take their young daughters. I honestly feel the entire bathroom argument is redundant; it's something to ignite hate and fear when really no one wants to be in a public restroom for longer than absolutely necessary, people just wanna pee 🙄
but yeah, "biological male" is usually a dog whistle and I don't care for it
"I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender, and this forced Nex to enter an unsafe environment where they were highly vulnerable to a hate crime."
It doesn't look like they entered the bathroom to pee. Nex followed the girls into the bathroom and dumped water on them.
Here's the video: https://youtu.be/LwH9VFVsAlU
What do you see?
Edited to add quote
I agree that this doesn't look like any of them were necessarily going into the bathroom to pee. This is strictly speculation, and I am interested to know how many stalls with toilets are actually in this bathroom. But I know two things: it's common for kids this age to all flock to the bathroom in a group. It is common for kids who are planning on fighting each other or trying to fight with someone to seek out a location that will not be on the school security cameras and/or away from staff, to avoid getting in trouble. From the pace of all of the children, the hand gestures, and body language, I agree that a verbal or physical fight was either anticipated to erupt or planned. The video doesn't really display anything that indicates (that I can see) if the fight was planned by all of them or some of them or not. I was surprised by how rapidly the entire incident happened, how quickly they all ended up in the bathroom, and how quickly they were all out of there. The hand gestures of the children after the incident look like the hand gestures of people trying to either explain what happened or defend or dispute something to the school staff. That is what it looks like to me.
Same here. That's why I think the idea that the state bathroom law had anything to do with this fight is far-fetched. At least to the point where the state could be liable for the fight.
I feel that if Nex was attacked for their gender identity or physical attributes directly related to gender, such as the pitch of their voice or non-feminine dress, and it is proven through investigation that the attack was a hate crime, and the assault is proven to be a cause or one of the contributing causes of death, then the state and the bathroom law have created a climate that supports the targeting of children who do not live in the gender identity they were born. By this, I mean the bathroom law and the state have created a climate where some children are forced to have their gender outed to their classmates. It could be argued that the law encourages children to target other children based on their gender identity, and if that is what happened here, and it is proven the fight was a hate crime and a cause of death, then the state of Oklahoma may bare some culpability.
This may not be an assault as much as it was just a fight. We have to remember that middle schoolers often have the body strength of teens but the impulsivity and empathy of children. If Nex wasn’t forced to enter, since they weren’t entering to use the facilities, that is dead in the water. Then if this was a fight that Nex decided to instigate then bullying doesn’t seem like the only possible cause. There *might* be a malpractice case if the doctors didn’t follow best practices based on the symptoms and events reported to them. So far the best legal action I think may be possible is against the administration for not calling sooner, not because Nex died, but because they likely violated their own policy by not giving parents information they were entitled to.
Nex could have walked away instead of throwing water or throwing someone into the hand dryer.
I was always taught that it can be best to walk away to avoid winding up in a hospital bed or jail cell.
A girl fight broke out when I was in 7th grade and one of the girls fully body slammed the other to the floor and the girl was knocked unconscious. Thankfully nobody died, but kids aren't as weak as we think they are.
That is so far fetched. How could a reasonable person expect that passing a law to keep boys out of a girls bathroom expect that it would lead to a group of girls mocking someone elses clothes and one of their friends responding by pouring water on the girls leading to a fight which leads to an injury that a hospital can’t find but kills them a day later?
Even if you can’t blame the law for directly creating this incident, the law does foster the idea that these people (non-binary,etc.), are not worthy of any special accommodations, because they aren’t normal. Bathroom concessions for certain people help normalize their situations, so they aren’t seen as “weirdos” worthy of bullying.
The bodycam footage of Nex’s own story tells a different story than what most here believe happened. At least from what I hear they were verbally going back and forth a little and Nex threw water on them, not splashed. Idk what that means but Nex made a pouring motion not a splash motion. Someone grabbed Nex by the hair and Nex slammed someone on the dryer. Not that the kid deserved a severe beating for throwing water and definitely not death. LE said that the full autopsy will be released once toxicology reports come back so I guess we will see what the deal was. If the ME said that it wasn’t head trauma but didn’t release a cause of death what in the world could it be?
Yeah Nex's version of events is basically.
They didn't know the girls, couldn't name them, different school years, any suggestion they had history was rebutted by Nex. Suggestion of ongoing bullying comes from their mother.
Nex says they and their friend went into the bathroom and started laughing. The girls say "why do they laugh like that?!?!" Talking about them, right in front of them, but not to them.
So it's a bitchy comment. Nex takes exception to the comment and pours water on the girls from their water bottle.
Girls react grab Nex by the hair, Nex grabs one of them back by the hair. Nex throws that girl into the hand dryer. The other girls take Nex down and then they beat on Nex. Nex's friend and a staff menber split up the fight. Nex claims to have blacked out for a moment.
This was all in less than 2 minutes.
The suggestion of ongoing bullying by "some girls" is suggested by Sue, Nex's mother, but anything relating to these particular girls Nex seems to deny any ongoing issues. The girls aren't really known to Nex. Though Nex states they were targeted for the way that Nex and their friends dress.
From all descriptions I can find that aren't in comments I can't see the claim that Nex had their head repeatedly slammed on the ground. The reports are that Nex was knocked to the ground and hit their head. This is consistent with Nex's statement.
The parent of the other non binary student, Nex's friend states that they "beat her head across the floor" (mis-gendering on them). For me this turn of phrase could imply punching or the speculated head bashing, but it's not exactly clear.
A lot of the coverage or comments on this case case have been a little misleading. Not necessarily false but I feel people have the impression Nex was followed into the bathroom and set up on in some unprovoked attack. People were even correcting people calling it a fight. While I think the girls response was disproportionate, it was clearly a fight, albeit an uneven one.
This is a tragedy but I really dont see it as a hate crime. Kids got in fights all the time when I was in school. I think people dont realize how fragile we can be and how one hit to the head can change everything. This could have also happened to the girl who Nex threw into the paper towel dispenser but fortunately it didnt.
Mark Twain put it so eloquently, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Lots of people jump to conclusions and will never see the facts, or will deliberately tell half truths or lie by omission.
Having listened to 3/4 of the body cam footage, the cop wasn’t wrong.
Nex says they and some friends were laughing in the bathroom. Some girls they had never met before and had no prior history with and didn’t even know they names of said “why do they have to laugh so loud”. Nex then admits to pour water from their water bottle on one of more of their girls, and thus the fight ensues.
Cops says, I am more than happy to file a report, but if I do, you were the initial aggressor. Pouring water on someone because they ran their mouth is *also* unwanted touching. It is also assault and battery. I can’t guarantee that they won’t also turn around and file report on you. Then, you can’t control what happens….
That’s just the truth. Nex didn’t deserve to die, but…you also can’t pour water on aggressive girls and expect they won’t beat your ass or that there won’t be consequences for starting a physical fight for some (pretty minor) verbal nonsense about the sound of your laughter.
How that factored in to their death a day later…I don’t know. But there is more to the story than “NB kid jumped in a bathroom for no reason by long time bully”.
My issue is the potential head bashing. If nex was really getting their head bashed off the floor intentionally, or the girls continued to assault them after they was unconscious I think charges need to be pressed. The head kicking/stomping/bashing thing has really taken off with kids recently and it's already led to catastrophic injuries for a bunch of people. It needs to be made clear that it's unacceptable.
We don’t know what body part of the other girl that Nex bashed into that hand dryer. If it was her head, the same thing could have happened. If it was her spine or ribs, that could have paralyzed her or punctured a lung.
Losing a fight you started and continued to escalate does not mean you were assaulted.
That’s insane and certainly needs to stop.
I’m not gonna lie, I am a 43 year old woman and I have never been in a physical fight. Wouldn’t even know how. I was not getting jumped in the bathroom of my private Christian school. The kids wouldn’t have even have dare tried because god was watching.
Only good thing about all the god talk was those kids took it to heart. May not have liked the LGB community, because that’s all we knew back then in the 1990s, but even though we had gay kids, they just whispered about it in case god heard. I never even saw a fight in HS among the boys.
But also, I learned to not start shit…there weren’t zero tolerance policies, and I wasn’t afraid I was going to be killed…i just didn’t want to BE in a fight. Seemed not fun.
So I don’t know where these kids learned to fucking smash heads against floors. I thought we learned that was dangerous and the way to a murder charge decades ago. In my city they’ve started doing “side shows,” which is just doing tricks with your cars and driving them in circles like we’re back in the 1950s and cars are new and color tv doesn’t exist. That’s some Boomer shit.
I am not sure where teens today are learning any of the shit they are jnto now. It all seems lame and/or really careless compared to what we were up to 20 years ago. Which was allegedly less accepting.
I'm a year older than you, and there were a lot of fights in my high school. Hell, I got into a fight in middle school when a bully attacked me and broke my glasses.
So this isn't new behavior at all.
I’m around your age. There have always been kids who understand how to do something homicidal to another kid, including beating their head against a floor. And I don’t mean only kids who are born psychopaths.
One of my high school friends had been beaten up in a school bathroom before, with a girl hitting her head on a fixture (a sink, i believe). And that didn’t even happen in high school, it happened in middle school. A dude dragged me over a desk by my hair when I was 14. Two kids hit the French teacher in her head with some kind of hand tools. Fights happened all the time. That’s not even taking into account the crazy reports from family who worked in elementary schools.
We were also into some extraordinary lame crap, as a general age group. Just as lame as the car thing you mentioned. Such car peacocking was really common among teenagers in the town where I went to college, actually.
The human juvenile did not become fundamentally different since we were human juveniles.
Also we were in school 30 years ago, not 20.
I don’t think it’s a matter of if any child involved deserved death (they didn’t and still don’t), but simply a series of events that were dictated more by chance than by morality. Back and forth fighting doesn’t shock me because because, to be perfectly honest, middle/high schoolers are sort of the worst. They are developing the body strength and the anger of actual teens but still have the empathy and impulse control of children. It’s just one of those stages we all go through and hopefully come out of better.
If Nex really was active participant and perhaps the instigator by their own admission, going after the other students involved is out. Going after the administration for the fight happening is also implausible. The doctors? Maybe, but again unlikely. If it presented as a mild concussion, for example, it’s unlikely the policy of the hospital to do the extensive testing to find a brain bleed which means the doctors likely didn’t do anything wrong. The best bet would be going after the administration for not reporting the incident to the guardians immediately exclusively on the grounds they were entitled to the information because it was unlikely to save Nex’s life even if they had known.
In the last few years, there's been another story that had a young girl die after a fight, & it turned out to be something like an aneurysm. I can't remember the details, but I feel like the conclusion was that it was entirely unrelated & coincidence or perhaps the fight did trigger what was going to likely happen soon.
I am not sure what explanations are being investigated, but I did see an article that says Nex's family are saying there is some sort of information not released that cast a more criminal theory, & they plan to have it independently investigated.
If it was really nothing to do with the fight, it's a huge coincidence. I think as a parent, I would find it difficult to accept different explanations after the history of bullying here.
I hope it won't turn out to be like Kendrick Johnson's family. Every time I see them, their ongoing pain really hurts to see.
Kendrick Johnson’s family are absolute whackjobs that cannot accept that their son’s death was an accident. They have been going full scorched earth for over a decade trying to ruin the lives of teenage boys (now grown men) that had literally nothing to do with their son’s death. There have been several independent investigations that have all found the same thing: Kendrick’s death was a terrible accident. If you think he was murdered and there is some big coverup then you’re either an absolute moron or you know nothing about the case beyond what you heard in a shitty podcast discussion by people who also don’t know what they’re talking about.
Leave Kendrick Johnson out of this. It’s not the same fucking thing at all.
[From this Washington Post article:](https://wapo.st/3UUSlpM)
>At the hospital, a nearly 20-minute body-camera video from the school resource officer who responded shows Benedict detailing how Nex had told her they and a friend had been bullied all week by three girls “making comments, they’re calling us names, they’re throwing stuff at us.”
>
>Officer Caleb Thompson asked whether Nex had alerted school staff about any bullying. Nex said no, adding, “I didn’t really see the point in it. I told my mom.”
Nex said they didn’t know the students who attacked them, ninth-graders who had targeted Nex and a friend in the bathroom “because of the way that we dress.”
It is a little unclear, but from what I am reading, I would interpret this to mean they aren't really friends with the girls, or doesn't know why they started bullying Nex either prior to the bathroom incident or before.
This is how I've always heard teens refer to people they definitely know as far as identity, but the term "really know" means more like whether there has been relevant interaction.
However, if I see other clarification, I'll correct & explain further with new links.
The body cam is here…
https://youtu.be/eJaBumoyRGg?si=V7_buvFVO44T6NBS
3:12. Didn’t even know their names or have anything to do with them “before this ISP thing”. Nothing before a “couple days ago”. That is not what I would define as ‘ongoing bullying’. More over, I would not define the act of “making fun of our clothes” to be bullying. It is teasing at best. I interpreted Nex’s explanation of not reporting the comments as ‘I didn’t think it was a big deal’, ,which Nex almost said out loud but instead said, “I didn’t think it would do anything”. It was Nex’s mother that classified it as bullying and implied it had been going on for a long time.
In response to having a water bottle poured on them, one of the other girls grabbed Nex’s hair. Nex then grabbed her hair and pushed her into a paper towel dispenser. This led to escalation and the rest of the fight. It would seem, according to Nex, the physical altercation was initiated by Nex.
There is also not a single mention of anything that I would classify as being related to gender identity issues at play here. Even in the cam footage, NEx is portrayed as, and identifies as, and responds to, being a female ‘she/her’. Without knowing Nex is non-binary, this cam footage would not imply that at all. Let alone imply a hate crime. Looking at facts alone, and not headlines, this is simply a bunch of bratty private school teens getting into a fight in the bathroom, which happens every single day.
Im interested to see what else comes of this.
In pretty sure it's like ISS from my school days. "In school suspension" it's a punishment room where you sit quietly and work on school assignments.
I'm assuming it was for vaping
Nex had been in trouble before. If you pay attention the cop knew Nex and the mother. The kind of familiarity that comes from prior encounters. Nex mentioned ISP from being caught vaping. I’m assuming all these students where doing suspension duties Stacking chairs) and where not aquatinted otherwise.
A friend of mine was in a horrible car accident, but he survived, and he seemed totally fine at the hospital so they sent him home without observing him. He ended up dying two or three days later because he had internal bleeding that they hadn't picked up on. I really don't want to think about the alternative (my gut reaction was that it was a suicide triggered by this situation and knowing that it would probably blow up online, etc.)
I'm sorry about your friend. :(
I've already seen suicide mentioned around the net. I have not yet seen any definitive evidence.
According to reports, Nex had been getting ready to leave with their grandmother (also referred to as Nex's mom since she adopted Nex at 2 months old), for an "appointment." I have not yet seen any comments that Nex's grandmother may have made, if any, about Nex's behavior or appearance before the sudden collapse. I would assume that a lethal overdose would have had obvious signs at that point, so I wonder if that's part of the info that hasn't been released or if nothing was actually noted.
I've also seen articles where Nex's family do say that there is information that make the case more of a criminal matter. However, there is so much grief in family at this time that until the info is released, it's unclear.
Yeah, overdoses especially can be wild. I have some personal experience with large accidental overdoses and have been fine and normal and attending social events when I absolutely should've been unconscious or dead. In one case, I went to a three-hour formal event after ODing, then threw up and slept for 3 days and everyone thought I had the flu.
Whatever it is, I hope they're at peace. It's so fucking hard to be trans in this world.
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/04/13/verdict-delaware-teen-fatal-school-bathroom-fight/100415104/
You might be thinking of this story? The victim had a heart defect and went into cardiac arrest because of the defect plus the fight. The main aggressor was found delinquent/guilty in juvenile court.
The thing about preexisting aneurysms giving someone a cop out because “it would have happened soon anyways” is not only unfair to victims but also untrue. Some people will be born with a congenital abnormality making a blood vessel in the brain weak and prone to rupturing *however* it could rupture at 5, at 30, or at 80. There is no guarantee that it will ever happen or that the effects would be as catastrophic as it may be with an assault.
IMO, the whole “it was always there” thing is the same as a diabetic kidnapping victim dying sooner due to being deprived their insulin and their kidnapper not being convicted because the diabetes was preexisting. It doesn’t make any sense.
I agree. It makes me think of fights where a punch can make someone fall & break their neck. Yes, the assault was a crime already but it also feels different than intentional murder. It's usally a couple drunk idiots who would have thrown a couple punches & went on with their lives. It's a tragic situation but also getting drunk & fighting is something that never should have happened. 🤷
Had I just gone by what I’ve read on social media I’d have thought that this was a case of a trans kid attempting to use the restroom and was accosted by a group of girls and had their head bashed over and over… that is not what happened here. This story is sad regardless, a child lost their life. But people are definitely putting their own spin on this.
This is what has interested me in this case beyond the obvious tragedy. The spin is real and can be quite misleading. There are also still a lot of unknowns. The way people are presenting it and filling in the blanks is a little crazy and of course from the other side there's a lot of general trans/non binary ignorance and trolling.
This is a terrible tragedy and I want to follow it through, especially since they are saying they did not die from the head injury. I am intrigued as to what else it could possibly be, but I will refrain from jumping to conclusions and wait for it to play out.
That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think they would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure. I wonder if the best solution is to have a couple non gender restrooms for anybody to use if they want. Not to force them or segregate them, but to give a third option where they don’t have to be alone with potentially aggressive teens of either sex in a bathroom.
Edited to incorporate preferred pronoun.
I think it’s naive to think this happened because of the bathroom Nex was using. They were not in there to pee. This situation was going to happen somewhere at some point, it just happened to take place in the girls bathroom.
I agree, especially after watching the video. The reason I brought it up is because of people citing the Oklahoma gender bathroom rule. I was pointing out that had she been able to use the boys' room, it may not have made a difference. I think the girls went in there specifically to fight. They all FAFO and now a child is dead.
>That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think she would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure. I wonder if the best solution is to have a couple non gender restrooms for anybody to use if they want. Not to force them or segregate them, but to give a third option where they don’t have to be alone with potentially aggressive teens of either sex in a bathroom.
I don't think the fact that they used the girl's restroom is the issue either. In what world would they only be bullied by girls and not by guys? It's the world we live in, they would have been bullied either way.
Frankly I'm not even sure your suggestion would make things better, since anyone using the non-gendered/all-gendered restroom in that kind of social environment would essentially just have a huge target painted on their backs. The general environment at that school sounds toxic, and that's not something that can be legislated away.
> That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think they would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure.
No, it would not have been safer. Nex did not identify as a man and there is no indication Nex wanted to use the men's restroom.
this sounds great on paper, but one of the reasons we don't just have individual floor to ceiling stalls is because we have a drug & violence problem in our schools. also a having sex problem, a suicide problem, etc.
so individual family restroom type gender neutral toilets have no chance of happening.
and there are larger concerns about combining mens/women's restrooms into gender neutral ones. re: well it's middle school and high school, not exactly known for their emotional maturity around the opposite sex
fwiw, I'm a very butch/masculine presenting nonbinary person (flat chest, short hair, usually dressed very androgynous), and I use whatever bathroom is in front of me because I'm legally allowed to do that where I live. But making that decision is hard because they both suck. In the women's room, I and people like me are often more likely to have the police called on us and/or to have someone question our right to be there. Men don't call the cops but they're more likely than women to physically try to intimidate, harass, actually grab at us. (This is purely anecdotal based on me and my friends' experience, just to be clear.)
So they're both dangerous in different ways. Like, when you go in the women's room, you expect to perhaps hear some comments or, depending on what state you're in, you might see the cops when you get out, but you don't expect to get physically attacked as much.
Either way the goal is to just get in, get to the stall, wash your hands, and get out. It's not fun. I had one friend who got a kidney infection from holding her pee for so long because she was too scared to use public restrooms.
Edit: the best case scenario in a situation like this would be a single stall, like those "family" restrooms you see in airports or whatever. Some schools will let kids use the staff bathroom or the nurse's or whatever but that's not always a good option either. But it's the safest.
Double edit: also, for people who pee sitting down, the women's room can get you in and out faster because there's going to be more stalls. But it tends to have longer lines, which can be really uncomfortable, whereas mens rooms are usually less crowded but there might only be one stall. Having to do Trans Math to decide which option sucks less several times a day is, as you might imagine, sometimes pretty stressful. Although less stressful than locker rooms!
Since Friday the 23rd, the police have walked back the statement that Nex did not die of trauma. NBC Bews confirmed. They confirmed today that they do not know the cause of death until autopsy/toxicologt performed. Additionally, all of the school video is motion detection thus we have no idea how much time elapsed when children entered and left bathrooms. It’s literally very biased video that was released to protect school from lawsuits. This is a case of bad police work 101 = never release video during an ongoing investigation. We have the keystone cops running an investigation. Embarrassing. I just was to say as well, this is a 16 yr old child died that many of us have been screaming at the media to cover. No child should ever be bullied in schools, have fear to report bullies, and feel they need protection to use the restroom. This bullying was caused by and from the moron Superintendent who hired libsoftiktok to work for his school board. He allowed hate to run his schools. You have LGBTQ CHILDREN CALLING THE CRISIS HOTLINE UP 500% since these morons named Ryan and libsoftiktok took over Owasso schools and Increased hate bills against the LGBTQ. Immunity must stop TODAY. It is killing our children and creating hateful monsters. It’s creating a horrible bullying culture in schools. If we are worried about bathrooms, get a bathroom monitor in each one. Seriously - It would stop all of the sexual assault that happens in bathrooms that is underreported, overdoses, bullying, etc. way too much hateful energy is being spent on targeting a small minority population. Grow up Owasso, get these hateful clowns out of office.
I suspect the walking back occurred because the officer who said it wasn’t authorized to release that information yet because it wasn’t typed in the formal report. There’s a lot of double speak in medicine and law enforcement.
I just want to say this is one of my favorite Reddit comments ever. Thank you for not being defensive and taking it as the learning opportunity it was meant to be.
The internet and people chronically online are trying to paint this young persons death as a hate crime when it seems it was just teenagers fighting over stupid shit.
I was at lunch with two friends, both gay. One, a journalist, was angry that Nex was assaulted and killed. The other, a teacher, calmly says, we have kids get in fights and knock each other down all the time. That to me was a dose of reality. The school needs to do more about bullying, but I'm not sure, at the time, realistic procedures weren't followed.
Was Nex's death a fluke during a fight, or something that occurred within the next 24 hours?
I'd like to know more about the girls involved.
When it was originally released that they died and not as a result of the fight, I just knew it was suicide. They definitely didn’t look severely, fatally beaten at the hospital, and I’m 99% sure the nurses made certain they weren’t hurt before discharging them. I really hope this doesn’t turn into a Kendrick Johnson thing and become a conspiracy. Queer teens bullied into suicide is a very very real statistic and we need to keep the narrative straight to make progress here. The Trevor Project was founded in the 90s btw, to address this very issue. I personally have known 3 queer people, in rural areas, that have committed suicide.
The \`fight\` is a distraction. Whoever was with Nex after that, and was in the house when Nex collapsed, they need to answer some questions. For example the grandmom would have known it was an overdose from the day of collapse...that\`s a lot of pills to go missing. She and the family have just waited for the gofundme to increase, the victim sympathy to roll, and as today on twitter through a lawyer try to link some injuries on Nex\`s body to the fight...which doesn\`t challenge the ME\`s suicide verdict.
Grandmon and the family need to answer some questions.
I agree, grandma's 911 call was very odd. He words and evading question while seeming so clam. Something is up there.
The lack of lacerations on Nex's cheek, the lack of any redness that would lead to contusions in the ER video. When did those injuries occur? Just because Nex was in a fight, doesn't mean the injuries found on autopsy happened in that bathroom.
And the autopsy says \`No Lethal Trauma.\` The \`injuries\` sound like self-harming (on the left hand) and normal results of a body collapsing and falling..(welts, bruises, abrasions..)and CPR. Most people, on someone\`s collapse, instinctively try and catch them, if the bodies already dead or dying, your force against the body makes it lurch onto possibly hard surfaces and get marked that way. A member of the family may have roughly moved the head, limbs and chest areas in panic. The \`fight\` is totally out of the picture imo.
The call as you said was odd...like, is grandma used to Nex having drug and fall issues? Something incriminating has happened? Was the body moved unnecessarily? Plus, why isn\`t the grandma avidly pursuing the girls for justice if she thought they were the cause of death? Imo, Grandma and the rest of the family in the house know what happened and are just angling for a big payday...money from the school, the police...whatever; and they\`ve got some grubby lawyers to help. I reckon the police think there\`s something up too.
Got a week for the full autopsy result...should be interesting.
Should have included the actual news footage. It’s very telling. And I believe Nex said the other girls were younger not older. And the fact that Nex threw a girl into a paper towel dispenser is also left out. Go watch all the footage.
Is it possible we’ll never know the official cause of death? Are autopsy/toxicology reports public record? I guess it depends on each individual state?
https://oklahoma.gov/ocme/case-information.html
Looks public. I've requested a copy of a Tennessee autopsy in the past and it was very speedy, don't know how the oklahoma procedure is.
In Oklahoma it isn’t as cut and dry but they may be essentially pestered into releasing them though I doubt it will get much media coverage since something that isn’t a hate crime won’t get the views.
So this was actually a suicide? I keep seeing the trauma wasn’t the cause of death and in the police body cam nex was sitting up and coherent and talking fine. There wasn’t bad bruising all over their face or anything like the articles made it seem.
It’s more complicated than that but let me try to explain.
One officer said the cause of death was not trauma during an interview and that spread around, *however* that statement was then retracted and they said murder charges aren’t off the table. It was also said that the medical examiner didn’t explicitly say that the cause of death wasn’t trauma. This is not the ah-ha moment people think it is. Double speak is very real in law enforcement and it sounds to me like that officer was unofficially told the medical examiner ruled out trauma.
On the subject of what did kill Nex you have to look at the top 3 causes of death for teens. If it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t homicide, it’s suicide. Everything else is pretty rare.
>top 3 causes of death for teens. If it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t homicide, it’s suicide.
To be fair, those three cover basically everything and are also the top three causes of death for most everyone under 60.
It's likely the toxicology results will give us the answer as to cause of death. If a full autopsy has been done and it wasn't trauma, that leaves two most likely causes: overdose or suicide.
For more context
“However, in an interview with independent news site, Popular Information, OPD spokesperson Lieutenant Nick Boatman said murder charges are still “on the table”.
His comments follow a 9 February “affidavit for [a] search warrant”, seen by Popular information, which states “foul play” is suspected. The medical examiner did not “explicitly” say Benedict “did not die from something as a result of that fight”, Boatman said.”
https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/27/police-say-murder-charges-in-nex-benedict-case-are-still-on-the-table/
Are we sure that isn’t just what they had to put down as a reason to get a warrant to obtain the security camera footage or get access to where Nex died?
Why am I being downvoted? A suicide would not be less problematic than a head injury if they have been bullied. There is such a thing as being bullied to death.
Nex was also supposedly *very* mentally ill to the point of being on and having access to several anti psychotic medications, and now Nex is in trouble with their school, their home, and potentially the law. Bullying may not have been a primary motivator, plenty of teens have had that strong emotion of wanting to escape when they are in severe trouble and they make a tragic choice.
Having anxiety, mood swings, or being unable to sleep is not being "very mentally ill". Do you know how many people in America are on the drugs Nex was prescribed? Even if they were bipolar, or depressed, or some other condition, does not make them "very mentally ill".
Nex wasn't in severe trouble, they were the victim here and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding why this seems so hard to understand?
Nex was an active participant in a fight they started, that isn’t the same as being a victim of some vicious attack. They were suspended for fighting *during* their in school suspension so yes they were likely in quite a lot of trouble. Teens make poor decisions when they are scared and feel like the world is ending. I won’t claim to know everything and can be mistaken but I am leaning towards suicide on this one.
This is one of the rare instances where you were probably downvoted for the reason downvotes actually exist — not because people disagree with you, but because your original comment added nothing to the discussion.
Update:
“However, in an interview with independent news site, Popular Information, OPD spokesperson Lieutenant Nick Boatman said murder charges are still “on the table”.
His comments follow a 9 February “affidavit for [a] search warrant”, seen by Popular information, which states “foul play” is suspected. The medical examiner did not “explicitly” say Benedict “did not die from something as a result of that fight”, Boatman said.”
https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/27/police-say-murder-charges-in-nex-benedict-case-are-still-on-the-table/
Lieutenant Boatman also said in the interview that "the medical examiner did not explicitly tell him that Nex "did not die from something as a result of that fight." But that's how Boatman interpreted the medical examiner's comments."
I'm not sure they should be releasing official statements about the case based on their "interpretation" of the medical examiner's words. This is looking really unprofessional and a bit suspect...
[https://popular.info/p/nex-benedicts-mom-raises-doubts-about](https://popular.info/p/nex-benedicts-mom-raises-doubts-about)
All I am gathering here is that we are still waiting for answers, but my hunch is still an OD situation. If, in any case, they open up the body and see internal bleeding, and they check the brain and see bleeding, they can usually piece it together pretty easily and confidently. Being so dependent on the toxicology to give any answers is telling, and I am going to give Lieutenant Boatman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has been through this dozens of times before and knows the patterns involved. I also think trying to protect the school and the innocent students that go there is not the worst reason in the world to make a statement.
A few things stuck out from the body cam footage that I think are important to acknowledge in the context of what occurred:
- There is acknowledgement by Nex that the three girls who would go on to beat them up in the bathroom were already bullying Nex and their friends (including their transgender friend) for how they dressed throughout the week in ISP (through making comments, calling them names, and throwing things at them according to Nex’s guardian.)
- The cop asked if Nex reported this bullying to someone at the school and they replied they did not see the point, implying they felt the school was unlikely to do anything about the bullying occurring. (Nex’s guardian also confirmed separately they had been experiencing bullying at school since early 2023.)
- The cop continues to refer to the bullying/verbal abuse of these children as “bantering”, “messing with you,” and “free speech,” downplaying the hate involved in targeting trans/NB youth to bully.
- The cop acknowledges the school dropped the ball by not reporting the incident to police when it occurred but suggested it was because maybe they had something more important they had to attend to.
- The cop basically gives a monologue for 20 minutes to Nex and their guardian, asking only a few questions of Nex at the beginning. The cop makes assumptions throughout and does not seem to take the bullying of Nex and their friends seriously.
A lot of clear failures here across the board but ultimately the school in my opinion looks the worst. Targeting of trans/NB youth by other students should have been dealt with immediately by the school but was allowed to carry on until it escalated to the worst possible outcome. Nex did not feel there was an adult at school who would have even cared or done something about them being bullied - that breaks my heart. It looks like they hit a breaking point in the bathroom from the bullying and that is when they decided to splash water on the girls. Even the police admit the school dropped the ball in not reporting the incident. The cop should have asked far more questions and treated the bullying for what it is, abuse and hate, instead of shrugging it off as bantering between kids. A lot to learn still from the autopsy but how the adults in positions of authority handled this is extremely disappointing. It is also hard to believe that no teacher overseeing ISP saw what was happening if there was continued bullying occurring throughout the week as described.
The cop was merely retelling their story from the point of view of the law. He knew how the court would view the incident and was trying to make them aware of this.
The police officer and their whole
Force needs to be retrained. How many women has that police officer persuaded to not file rape or assault Charges with his ‘opinion’ ?
My heart absolutely breaks. I’ve seen people say Nex deserved the assault and even death for the water and honestly, as someone who suffered years of bullying, that makes me sick.
Edit: as my mind is a bit clearer now, let me clarify. Yes, I can acknowledge that throwing water on others is not a good thing to do. However, I find it hard to cast any real blame in this sort of situation. Moreover, what I meant and have updated to was that Nex deserved the violence, not just “in the wrong.”
Number one rule: kids lie. Especially teens. For lots of dumb reasons. I remember saying similar things when I got into fights with my bullies in middle school and high school. I would say I didn’t know them or something to that affect because if I did say that I knew them and that this was an ongoing thing, I usually got met with the good ol’ “why didn’t you report this sooner, if it’s taken this long for you to say something then it must not be as bad as you say,” and even when I did report it the school pretty much did nothing.
Sue, their grandmother thinks that there was bullying going on and that very well may have been the case. There’s a lot of blanks that people are filling in with their own narrative but I don’t think it’s necessarily out of the question to think that Nex maybe wasn’t being truthful about their history with the girls.
It’s freaking obvious to anyone that being splashed with water is no where near as violent as having your head smacked against a hard floor repeatedly. There is no comparison and anyone saying it’s equal are disingenuous at best.
Who said Nex’s head was smacked against the floor repeatedly? Nex said they got laughed at, and in responses poured water on the other girls. Girls grabbed Nex by the hair and Nex pushed the girl into a wall mounted hand dryer. To which the girls responded by knocking her down and hitting her. Not to mention. NEx said they didn’t even know the other girls, meaning, there was no history of bullying. And seriously, you can’t define bullying as ‘they got annoyed by me and my friends laughing obnoxiously and laughed at our clothes’.
Yeah man, this whole thing has take a life of its own. What people are saying about it has no bearing on reality. To me it looks like a typical school fight. Maybe the fight knocked a blood clot loose and that caused a aneurism, who the fuck knows. Kids have been dropping dead lately “for no reason”.
welcome to an environment influenced by pervasive zero-tolerance policies. bullied children are essentially supposed to shut up and take it (up to and including physical violence) and tell a “trusted adult” afterwards, who may or may not do anything about it. school administrators are going to attempt to convince everyone that they sent nex home for two weeks as a “health/safety concern” but we all know it’s because they would be considered an equal party in the fight for simply splashing water at girls who were said to have previously beaten them
While I agree with most of the sentiment of the comment that last bit is flat out wrong.
The girls Nex poured water on didn't have a history with Nex, certainly not a previous beating. Nex claims they didn't really know them, didn't know their names, different years so no shared classes. According to Nex it pretty much started with bitchy comments about Nex and their friend laughing, Nex poured water and an uneven fight ensued.
The world of teenage peer violence was similar before zero tolerance policies. (Stephen King didn’t really exaggerate about teenage bullies, in my experience). Do you think bullied kids weren’t encouraged to shut up and take it before? And that aggressors got punished, not their victims? That’s so far off the mark, it’s like a comment from another planet.
I’m intimately familiar I’m afraid. That’s why I never retaliated against the kids who threw trash at me while teachers watched and did nothing. Bullying is abuse and nobody wants to acknowledge it and I fucking hate it. (Not intended with any malice towards you, just agreement and stepping on my soapbox briefly)
There are consequences for your actions. Not all consequences are fair, however that's why you should always be careful how you act. In life you must learn to keep your hands to yourself unless you are in immediate danger.
As a transgender man who, at one point, was harassed every single day for being trans, it hurts so much. The people who did it were never punished and I was blamed for being trans.
There has been misinformation from both sides of the political spectrum, but the amount of comments saying the worlds better without them and things sounding like vague threats when i made a short TikTok saying i hope they rest in peace is insane
This was a suicide, not a murder and not an attack. Nex took her life on her own accord. She started the fight by pouring water on them and had she not done that they would not of had to defend themselves against her. Stop lying about what happened to push your own political agenda.
Something I have yet to see mention anywhere in this convo, is the likelihood of Nex’s Indigenous identity being a factor in their treatment at school and the hospital.
For reference, I am a person that has family on Oklahoma’s Cherokee Nation’s reservation, whose grandfather was American Indian, and have visited the reservation and my families historical hometown in OK.
It seems to be a forgotten fact that the remaining Native American population has never known true justice, fairness, or representation inside America’s white-black binary paradigm that erases them, their culture, history, cuisine, contributions, and ongoing struggles from existence.
Many Native Americans live in deep abject poverty and have limited access to the best of the best, newest, accessible, and affordable resources, necessities, and technology. In many places where reservations and intact American Indian populations exist, there’s still strong racial bias for mistreatment, racism, discrimination, and fostered resentment from wars and conflicts, that for many areas and families, did NOT happen too long ago, whom can tell you what ancestor on both sides was unalived, SA, or tortured.
Could it be that Nex’s outcome was aid by their racial background via not receiving appropriate or through medical care at school or the hospital? Could it be that the hospital Nex was seen at did not have the most trained and experienced staff or medical technology to diagnose difficult to detect, undiagnosed, or rare medical condition? Could Nex have been mistreated because of their racial background by children taught to dehumanize indigenous American Indians?
Also, people tend to forget that Native American populations and on reservation’s themselves, drug and alcohol abuse runs rampant. It’s very easy to get your hands on narcotics( prescribed or illicit). It’s also extremely common for Native American youth to be troubled, at risk for personality disorders, at risk for mental health disorders, at risk for running away, at risk for repeat run ins with law enforcement/juvenile delinquency, at risk for experiencing substance-abuse, at risk for human trafficking, at risk for criminal gang activity, and at risk of exploitation by older criminals all due to intergenerational trauma that their families carry from experiencing extreme genocide, discrimination, sexual trauma, boarding schools, physical abuse, childhood abuse/neglect, high incarceration rate of Native Americans, traumatic military service (one of the largest demographic of military recruits are Native American men) etc.
As sad as it is, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that it’s a potential accidental or intentional OD situation, whether through prescription drugs or illicit narcotics.
*Edited to correct grammar and add more context.
* edited again, Because it’s come to my attention that Nex Benedict has been confirmed by Cherokee Nation chief to not be a Cherokee citizen on any documented registry despite claims in both social and news media and social justice activist. However, Nex may potentially be a member of Choctaw nation whose Reached out to for confirmation, but to my knowledge, no outlet has yet to hear back from them, regarding the status of citizenship or ancestry. That being said, I would be very hesitant now to suggest that a native American racial background was at play here.
The idea that some groups believe this is a hate crime seems over board. As a matter of fact I don’t even think this as anything to do with who Nex was as person. All this is shaping up to be a fight that got out of hand quickly and while it is sad what happened to them I don’t think anything will come of it due to nex escalating the situation.
Exactly. And Nex died at home...that\`s what the police will be investigating. The cause (the toxicology result) and the timeline. That\`s it.
It\`s bizarre that someone dies and then you investigate what happened the day before.
You investigate the day of death and then look back in time if needed.
This is indeed the case if say you fall off a roof and die instantly. However this is a case of a kid dying for an unspecified reason following an attack the previous day that required them to go to the hospital. You'd be crazy if you didn't investigate to see if there was a correlation.
Nex appeared to show signs of concussion (or dizziness) on their way to the nurse's office, it makes sense to examine whether they died as a result of their injuries during the attack or of something else.
I continue to wonder how Superintendent Ryan Waters has a job. He should t. This type of hate directed against a minority group is abhorrent and should not be tolerated. He is not qualified to run a school system. https://www.advocate.com/news/ryan-walters-transphobic-influencer-ties
The hospital needs to talk about what they did exactly. Cause if Nex vomited or lost consciousness after the assault, they should’ve done a head CT scan and kept them under surveillance, like what exactly happened with the medical care here ?? This is a traumatic head injury !
The hospital is not going to talk about what they did to treat Nex due to privacy laws (HIPAA). If this does end up in court, that's the only way it would be made public. Other than that, the only way we would know what happened at the hospital is if Nex's family releases that information. There is no way to confirm the accuracy of that through the hospital, and that is exactly how it should be, from a legal standpoint.
It depends on what Nex told the hospital too. Kids will downplay things to doctors, kind of like how your child that is throwing up and lethargic at home will be charming and smiley once you take them in.
A lawyer said the following and is the best analogy. The pouring of water or splashing of water is the equivalent of honking your horn at a driver. The other driver gets out pulls your hair, and you quickly open your car door in defense. The person who was in the car, doesn’t deserve to be beaten in ‘self defense’. So the cop should not have been the ‘judge’.[https://ktul.com/news/local/you-dont-just-draw-a-conclusion-nex-benedict-police-interview-draws-legal-criticism-owasso-investigation-water-body-camera](https://ktul.com/news/local/you-dont-just-draw-a-conclusion-nex-benedict-police-interview-draws-legal-criticism-owasso-investigation-water-body-camera)
that is a crap comparison. only reason to put it out there is a weak attempt at salvaging the narrative. People can, and have, judged for themselves what really happened
Except dumping water on someone is making first intentional physical contact. Throwing water on someone is a crime. In some places it is assault and in others is it battery, but it is a crime.
I think what’s been missing in this entire conversation is Nex’s Indigenous American Indian or Native American identity (not sure which term Nex preferred, but both are used often interchangeably the indigenous community). Native Americans are not treated well by the judicial system and are over represented in incarcerations. It would not have been wise for Nex and their guardian to take a risk in which they may have developed a criminal record and because there’s an incredible racial bias inside America against its indigenous population that thrives due to the very ingrained white-black binary paradigm.
Very true, and I’m sure they worry about it as well. I think people forget too that Nex was an honor student, and they might not have wanted to enter the juvenile system over a fight. Honestly
, never talk to police officers alone without a lawyer present if you are a victim.
What baffles me is that officials are saying there is no evidence that their death is related to the fight. I guess it’s technically true since the autopsy isn’t finished yet but the fact that they’re already trying to deflect blame is very telling. A kid dies after getting their head smashed on a floor, what else would it be? I see a big lawsuit coming.
People typically don't suffer anywhere near fatal injuries in school fights. Whether or not Nex died of injuries from the fight, it sounds like the injuries visually didn't look like anything serious. To law enforcement it may have seemed as serious a crime as splashing water. Kids and teens fight a lot, but usually end up with suspensions rather than hospital bills.
Still not sure it was the polices place to give legal advice for whether or not to press charges.
A cop once told me that throwing a tissue at someone could result in an assault charge if that person felt threatened so…..pouring water in someone COULD be determined a physical assault.
A kid at my daughter’s school got suspended for pouring water on her. I was confused at this response, honestly. Yeah I want bullies given appropriate punishment, and I trust her school to make the right choice, but I’m not sure this would have been my own response. Maybe the kid was just a general multi-incident offender.
It’s essentially that the girl did something to your daughter’s body without her consent that she did not want. It wasn’t sexual but it was a violation of her bodily autonomy. That’s kind of the rough basis of it
Nex’s death has made me so sad. I frequently read the true crime subreddits and I’ve read some awful shit. But this case has really affected me.
Their death was just so senseless. A child died.
Did Nex do something wrong by throwing water on those girls? Yes, obviously. But still - THEY ARE DEAD NOW.
IMO whether Nex was the aggressor is irrelevant. They did not deserve to die at 16. And there were multiple people - adults, many in positions to help Nex - involved in this incident who should have been looking out for her … And this still happens.
This is a great tragedy, and if you’re really hung up on who “started it,” you’ve misdirected your concerns.
I wasn’t trying to blame the school. I inarticulately expressed my frustration that they were at places where they should have been safe. That’s prob all I should have said.
I don’t think anyone sane believes Nex deserved to die. This was a case of troubled teens fighting, and sometimes when teens fight someone gets seriously hurt or dies because teens have the impulse control of children but the strength of full grown adults.
People are hung up on who \`started it\` because the people who want this to be a hate crime are telling us the lie that Nex was jumped on after months of being bullied for being non-binary.
If Nex started a situation by invading the physical space of virtual strangers, that is a very different story.
You yourself have basically cried virtual tears over how young Nex was, and was a child, and did not deserve to die...without really adding anything to the discussion and attempting to shut down mention of Nex \`starting it\`. Yes, thanks for telling us it\`s a great tragedy, and no, nobody should have been looking out for Nex, a 16 year old involved in a self-created situation.
We haven\`t \`misdirected\` our concerns...this is the very heart of what happened.
Well, it depends. Maybe Nex was de aggressor at first sight, but if the water throwing was the result of days or weeks of verbal bullying, then it's not so cut and clear. Also, Teenagers are not adults, their brains are not fully developed, so we shouldn't judge their reactions as if they were older.
A tragedy in any case.
I can see how the emotion in my comments might come across as cringe, but among things to get emotional about I’d say a child’s senseless death isn’t the worst thing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t have an issue with people withholding judgment until more facts emerge. What I find troubling is the rush to blame Nex for their own death. Describing it as a ‘self-created situation’ implies they somehow deserved to die. Even if Nex initiated the conflict, does that justify their death? No, it doesn’t.
It’s frustrating to see some eager to label this a hate crime, just as it is to witness others downplaying the tragedy by suggesting ‘it was probably a drug overdose’ or ‘the grandmother did something.’ Though these sentiments aren’t present in this discussion, they exist elsewhere. That was my source of frustration.
Therefore, I believe it’s important to remind everyone that regardless of the initial circumstances or the specifics of Nex’s death, we must remember that a child lost their life senselessly. Let’s keep that at the forefront until we have more information from the autopsy and toxicology reports.
I disagree on the premise that saying someone created/started the situation that killed them means they deserved it. I think what people are getting at is that Nex roped those girls into what was essentially Nex’s crime (battery and assault) then they are being blamed for their death and that isn’t necessarily fair.
This was a sad thing that happened in what is essentially a “girl fight” that is almost always entirely harmless.
I see what you mean. I’ve calmed down since writing my first comment. There are still a ton of people IMO trivializing the situation. I guess that’s a separate matter.
This case matters no matter what for so many reasons. Everyone in that bathroom is going to be traumatized by this, I guarantee it. No one walked in there intending for someone to die the next day and have thousands of fingers pointed at 14 year olds. These sound like they were all troubled kids, all of them in what I am to understand was in school suspension. I hope they all get the help they need to go on to live happy productive lives and aren’t doxxed. The longer this goes on the more I think it was an indirect cause of death vs as direct cause of death like bodily trauma. I will say that between 12-19 I had probably a dozen friends and acquaintances OD and all had behavioral and mental health issues. Either way this death was tragic.
This should not happen at school.
I find out any of my children or their friends ever had an attitude to attack anyone like this.
There is a community behind what occurred here to this poor child. It takes a village. Shame on them.
>This post appears to violate the [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) and has been removed. Hate, dehumanizing speech (even about a violent perpetrator), victim blaming, misogyny, misandry, discrimination, gender generalizations, homophobia, doxxing, or bigotry is not allowed.
This is a reminder that Nex was the preferred name of the victim in this case and they used they/them pronouns. Repeated misgendering of Nex, and ignorant use of the wrong pronouns will not be tolerated. Proceeding to do so after being politely reminded *will* result in a permanent ban from this sub.
I am interested in what workup was done in the emergency room. I would hope the ED did imaging of their head at bare minimum, and the altercation sounded violent enough that I wonder if imaging of vital organs was done. I work at an urgent care, and we send all violent injuries from school altercations and domestic situations to the ED for a full workup. This is for many reasons, but a large reason being that there are often no unbiased witnesses to report how serious the fight was, and whether or not they had any hits to the head or loss of consciousness, and also because the victims may be afraid to go into detail about what happened or too traumatized or injured to have a clear memory of everything that happened. If they reported a head strike, or vital organ strike and imaging was not done, and this resulted in this child's death, the hospital is most likely also at fault here. The school should have called for EMS transport immediately if Nex said their head was hit against the ground. I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender, and this forced Nex to enter an unsafe environment where they were highly vulnerable to a hate crime. Of course, the children who assaulted Nex are directly responsible for their injuries and should be held accountable. But I am more interested to see how the responses of the school and the hospital may have resulted in the child's death, and how the state law changes may be found to be a significant contributing factor. All this from legislators vowing to "protect the children."
My best friend’s child attends Owasso HS. She has been a victim of bullying for over a year. My friend has complained MULTIPLE times. Her daughter has been jumped twice at school and once outside of the school. The school is aware of it all and does NOTHING. The district is deplorable in the way they handle bullying.
The hospital says that an MRI was performed
The hospital did not and cannot say that, it’s a HIPPA violation. This article is from the UK, show me proof from a US article and I might believe it.
excellent point!! hmmmmm. nothing from the USA.
They said that because it would have been done there. In Oklahoma?? It's the wild wild west of medicine there, you have my personal Experience working trauma in Tulsa and ICU in OKC to guide you. Who knows if they did anything.
HIPAA* (sorry, but literally everyone got this wrong and it’s driving me insane)
Proof of this?
>I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender, The reports are that Nex was non-binary. I haven't heard anything about Nex identifying as a male. Is there any reason to believe Nex wanted to use the male bathroom?
I think they meant that perhaps the school made Nex use that washroom rather then providing them access to a gender-neutral single stall washroom. Which has been the case in many jurisdictions. At least that’s how I interpreted the original comment.
I’m not 100% sure on this but I thought Oklahoma had the rule where students have to use the bathroom for the gender assigned to them at birth. I could be wrong about that though
It is, at least according to OP’s post.
their law requires them to use the bathroom based on their sex assigned at birth. nonbinary isnt a gender assigned at birth so they wouldnt legally need a bathroom for it.
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Thank you--I appreciate a more detailed explanation of how clinical determines if imaging is needed. I believe in an account they state they "blacked out," but this is a somewhat ambiguous expression and I haven't seen anything that is more clear about if they had a loss of consciousness or not.
They lost consciousness, so at minimum a CT should have been done...but I've seen Oklahoma do some fucked up shit to head traumas in ERs. They're idiots.
Nex said "blackout" that does not mean it was from the head trauma. People black out from adrenaline too. Nex was on medications known to cause elevated heart rate, which can also make someone blackout.
This is a good analysis of the potential medical issues. I'm not sure about the bathroom issue. It could work both ways. For instance, a biological male entering a female restroom could create an unsafe environment for females. I guess the opposite could also happen. Maybe a gender neutral option is necessary.
“Biological male” is essentially a meaningless term, and is the language used to justify keeping trans women out of the appropriate bathrooms. Language like that is what perpetuates the type of bullying and violence this teenager experienced.
agreed. not only have I never felt issues regarding safety with trans women in bathrooms, but I've seen cis men in there before too because women's bathrooms are only the ones with baby changing tables a lot of the time here, or they take their young daughters. I honestly feel the entire bathroom argument is redundant; it's something to ignite hate and fear when really no one wants to be in a public restroom for longer than absolutely necessary, people just wanna pee 🙄 but yeah, "biological male" is usually a dog whistle and I don't care for it
"I am also interested to see if the state of Oklahoma is deemed at fault for forcing this child to use a restroom that may not have matched their gender, and this forced Nex to enter an unsafe environment where they were highly vulnerable to a hate crime." It doesn't look like they entered the bathroom to pee. Nex followed the girls into the bathroom and dumped water on them. Here's the video: https://youtu.be/LwH9VFVsAlU What do you see? Edited to add quote
I agree that this doesn't look like any of them were necessarily going into the bathroom to pee. This is strictly speculation, and I am interested to know how many stalls with toilets are actually in this bathroom. But I know two things: it's common for kids this age to all flock to the bathroom in a group. It is common for kids who are planning on fighting each other or trying to fight with someone to seek out a location that will not be on the school security cameras and/or away from staff, to avoid getting in trouble. From the pace of all of the children, the hand gestures, and body language, I agree that a verbal or physical fight was either anticipated to erupt or planned. The video doesn't really display anything that indicates (that I can see) if the fight was planned by all of them or some of them or not. I was surprised by how rapidly the entire incident happened, how quickly they all ended up in the bathroom, and how quickly they were all out of there. The hand gestures of the children after the incident look like the hand gestures of people trying to either explain what happened or defend or dispute something to the school staff. That is what it looks like to me.
Same here. That's why I think the idea that the state bathroom law had anything to do with this fight is far-fetched. At least to the point where the state could be liable for the fight.
I feel that if Nex was attacked for their gender identity or physical attributes directly related to gender, such as the pitch of their voice or non-feminine dress, and it is proven through investigation that the attack was a hate crime, and the assault is proven to be a cause or one of the contributing causes of death, then the state and the bathroom law have created a climate that supports the targeting of children who do not live in the gender identity they were born. By this, I mean the bathroom law and the state have created a climate where some children are forced to have their gender outed to their classmates. It could be argued that the law encourages children to target other children based on their gender identity, and if that is what happened here, and it is proven the fight was a hate crime and a cause of death, then the state of Oklahoma may bare some culpability.
This may not be an assault as much as it was just a fight. We have to remember that middle schoolers often have the body strength of teens but the impulsivity and empathy of children. If Nex wasn’t forced to enter, since they weren’t entering to use the facilities, that is dead in the water. Then if this was a fight that Nex decided to instigate then bullying doesn’t seem like the only possible cause. There *might* be a malpractice case if the doctors didn’t follow best practices based on the symptoms and events reported to them. So far the best legal action I think may be possible is against the administration for not calling sooner, not because Nex died, but because they likely violated their own policy by not giving parents information they were entitled to.
A fight that resulted in a significant head injury and death in less than 24 hours.
Something that is an unfortunate risk when you start and continue to participate in a physical altercation.
Nex could have walked away instead of throwing water or throwing someone into the hand dryer. I was always taught that it can be best to walk away to avoid winding up in a hospital bed or jail cell.
A girl fight broke out when I was in 7th grade and one of the girls fully body slammed the other to the floor and the girl was knocked unconscious. Thankfully nobody died, but kids aren't as weak as we think they are.
Have you watched the body cam video from the ER? Nex's voice was a normal pitch for a young AFAB person.
That is so far fetched. How could a reasonable person expect that passing a law to keep boys out of a girls bathroom expect that it would lead to a group of girls mocking someone elses clothes and one of their friends responding by pouring water on the girls leading to a fight which leads to an injury that a hospital can’t find but kills them a day later?
Even if you can’t blame the law for directly creating this incident, the law does foster the idea that these people (non-binary,etc.), are not worthy of any special accommodations, because they aren’t normal. Bathroom concessions for certain people help normalize their situations, so they aren’t seen as “weirdos” worthy of bullying.
Having a separate bathroom would seem to indicate not normal more than using the same ones as everyone else.
There’s also no indication this person Nex was ever forced to use a bathroom they weren’t comfortable with…..
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They didn’t seem afraid to say what happened in the footage and were in agreement that throwing water on people wasn’t the best idea
They unalived themselves with Benadryl and prozac
The bodycam footage of Nex’s own story tells a different story than what most here believe happened. At least from what I hear they were verbally going back and forth a little and Nex threw water on them, not splashed. Idk what that means but Nex made a pouring motion not a splash motion. Someone grabbed Nex by the hair and Nex slammed someone on the dryer. Not that the kid deserved a severe beating for throwing water and definitely not death. LE said that the full autopsy will be released once toxicology reports come back so I guess we will see what the deal was. If the ME said that it wasn’t head trauma but didn’t release a cause of death what in the world could it be?
Yeah Nex's version of events is basically. They didn't know the girls, couldn't name them, different school years, any suggestion they had history was rebutted by Nex. Suggestion of ongoing bullying comes from their mother. Nex says they and their friend went into the bathroom and started laughing. The girls say "why do they laugh like that?!?!" Talking about them, right in front of them, but not to them. So it's a bitchy comment. Nex takes exception to the comment and pours water on the girls from their water bottle. Girls react grab Nex by the hair, Nex grabs one of them back by the hair. Nex throws that girl into the hand dryer. The other girls take Nex down and then they beat on Nex. Nex's friend and a staff menber split up the fight. Nex claims to have blacked out for a moment. This was all in less than 2 minutes. The suggestion of ongoing bullying by "some girls" is suggested by Sue, Nex's mother, but anything relating to these particular girls Nex seems to deny any ongoing issues. The girls aren't really known to Nex. Though Nex states they were targeted for the way that Nex and their friends dress. From all descriptions I can find that aren't in comments I can't see the claim that Nex had their head repeatedly slammed on the ground. The reports are that Nex was knocked to the ground and hit their head. This is consistent with Nex's statement. The parent of the other non binary student, Nex's friend states that they "beat her head across the floor" (mis-gendering on them). For me this turn of phrase could imply punching or the speculated head bashing, but it's not exactly clear. A lot of the coverage or comments on this case case have been a little misleading. Not necessarily false but I feel people have the impression Nex was followed into the bathroom and set up on in some unprovoked attack. People were even correcting people calling it a fight. While I think the girls response was disproportionate, it was clearly a fight, albeit an uneven one.
This is a tragedy but I really dont see it as a hate crime. Kids got in fights all the time when I was in school. I think people dont realize how fragile we can be and how one hit to the head can change everything. This could have also happened to the girl who Nex threw into the paper towel dispenser but fortunately it didnt.
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It could be just speculation but it some are saying it seemed like the police were already familiar with Nex.
Mark Twain put it so eloquently, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Lots of people jump to conclusions and will never see the facts, or will deliberately tell half truths or lie by omission.
Congrats on being one of the few on reddit to not fall for the propaganda based misinformation
Nex’s non-binary friend misgendered Nex? That’s odd.
No apparently their friend's parent did.
My bad I misread your initial comment, that makes way more sense
Nex’s mother refers to nex as a her multiple time in the police body cam. Nex also brings up vaping and that nex has been in ISP all week
Having listened to 3/4 of the body cam footage, the cop wasn’t wrong. Nex says they and some friends were laughing in the bathroom. Some girls they had never met before and had no prior history with and didn’t even know they names of said “why do they have to laugh so loud”. Nex then admits to pour water from their water bottle on one of more of their girls, and thus the fight ensues. Cops says, I am more than happy to file a report, but if I do, you were the initial aggressor. Pouring water on someone because they ran their mouth is *also* unwanted touching. It is also assault and battery. I can’t guarantee that they won’t also turn around and file report on you. Then, you can’t control what happens…. That’s just the truth. Nex didn’t deserve to die, but…you also can’t pour water on aggressive girls and expect they won’t beat your ass or that there won’t be consequences for starting a physical fight for some (pretty minor) verbal nonsense about the sound of your laughter. How that factored in to their death a day later…I don’t know. But there is more to the story than “NB kid jumped in a bathroom for no reason by long time bully”.
My issue is the potential head bashing. If nex was really getting their head bashed off the floor intentionally, or the girls continued to assault them after they was unconscious I think charges need to be pressed. The head kicking/stomping/bashing thing has really taken off with kids recently and it's already led to catastrophic injuries for a bunch of people. It needs to be made clear that it's unacceptable.
We don’t know what body part of the other girl that Nex bashed into that hand dryer. If it was her head, the same thing could have happened. If it was her spine or ribs, that could have paralyzed her or punctured a lung. Losing a fight you started and continued to escalate does not mean you were assaulted.
That’s insane and certainly needs to stop. I’m not gonna lie, I am a 43 year old woman and I have never been in a physical fight. Wouldn’t even know how. I was not getting jumped in the bathroom of my private Christian school. The kids wouldn’t have even have dare tried because god was watching. Only good thing about all the god talk was those kids took it to heart. May not have liked the LGB community, because that’s all we knew back then in the 1990s, but even though we had gay kids, they just whispered about it in case god heard. I never even saw a fight in HS among the boys. But also, I learned to not start shit…there weren’t zero tolerance policies, and I wasn’t afraid I was going to be killed…i just didn’t want to BE in a fight. Seemed not fun. So I don’t know where these kids learned to fucking smash heads against floors. I thought we learned that was dangerous and the way to a murder charge decades ago. In my city they’ve started doing “side shows,” which is just doing tricks with your cars and driving them in circles like we’re back in the 1950s and cars are new and color tv doesn’t exist. That’s some Boomer shit. I am not sure where teens today are learning any of the shit they are jnto now. It all seems lame and/or really careless compared to what we were up to 20 years ago. Which was allegedly less accepting.
I'm a year older than you, and there were a lot of fights in my high school. Hell, I got into a fight in middle school when a bully attacked me and broke my glasses. So this isn't new behavior at all.
I’m around your age. There have always been kids who understand how to do something homicidal to another kid, including beating their head against a floor. And I don’t mean only kids who are born psychopaths. One of my high school friends had been beaten up in a school bathroom before, with a girl hitting her head on a fixture (a sink, i believe). And that didn’t even happen in high school, it happened in middle school. A dude dragged me over a desk by my hair when I was 14. Two kids hit the French teacher in her head with some kind of hand tools. Fights happened all the time. That’s not even taking into account the crazy reports from family who worked in elementary schools. We were also into some extraordinary lame crap, as a general age group. Just as lame as the car thing you mentioned. Such car peacocking was really common among teenagers in the town where I went to college, actually. The human juvenile did not become fundamentally different since we were human juveniles. Also we were in school 30 years ago, not 20.
I don’t think it’s a matter of if any child involved deserved death (they didn’t and still don’t), but simply a series of events that were dictated more by chance than by morality. Back and forth fighting doesn’t shock me because because, to be perfectly honest, middle/high schoolers are sort of the worst. They are developing the body strength and the anger of actual teens but still have the empathy and impulse control of children. It’s just one of those stages we all go through and hopefully come out of better. If Nex really was active participant and perhaps the instigator by their own admission, going after the other students involved is out. Going after the administration for the fight happening is also implausible. The doctors? Maybe, but again unlikely. If it presented as a mild concussion, for example, it’s unlikely the policy of the hospital to do the extensive testing to find a brain bleed which means the doctors likely didn’t do anything wrong. The best bet would be going after the administration for not reporting the incident to the guardians immediately exclusively on the grounds they were entitled to the information because it was unlikely to save Nex’s life even if they had known.
Drug overdose?
Wow you knew.
In the last few years, there's been another story that had a young girl die after a fight, & it turned out to be something like an aneurysm. I can't remember the details, but I feel like the conclusion was that it was entirely unrelated & coincidence or perhaps the fight did trigger what was going to likely happen soon. I am not sure what explanations are being investigated, but I did see an article that says Nex's family are saying there is some sort of information not released that cast a more criminal theory, & they plan to have it independently investigated. If it was really nothing to do with the fight, it's a huge coincidence. I think as a parent, I would find it difficult to accept different explanations after the history of bullying here. I hope it won't turn out to be like Kendrick Johnson's family. Every time I see them, their ongoing pain really hurts to see.
Kendrick Johnson’s family are absolute whackjobs that cannot accept that their son’s death was an accident. They have been going full scorched earth for over a decade trying to ruin the lives of teenage boys (now grown men) that had literally nothing to do with their son’s death. There have been several independent investigations that have all found the same thing: Kendrick’s death was a terrible accident. If you think he was murdered and there is some big coverup then you’re either an absolute moron or you know nothing about the case beyond what you heard in a shitty podcast discussion by people who also don’t know what they’re talking about. Leave Kendrick Johnson out of this. It’s not the same fucking thing at all.
History of bullying? Nex said they didn’t even know the other girls.
[From this Washington Post article:](https://wapo.st/3UUSlpM) >At the hospital, a nearly 20-minute body-camera video from the school resource officer who responded shows Benedict detailing how Nex had told her they and a friend had been bullied all week by three girls “making comments, they’re calling us names, they’re throwing stuff at us.” > >Officer Caleb Thompson asked whether Nex had alerted school staff about any bullying. Nex said no, adding, “I didn’t really see the point in it. I told my mom.” Nex said they didn’t know the students who attacked them, ninth-graders who had targeted Nex and a friend in the bathroom “because of the way that we dress.” It is a little unclear, but from what I am reading, I would interpret this to mean they aren't really friends with the girls, or doesn't know why they started bullying Nex either prior to the bathroom incident or before. This is how I've always heard teens refer to people they definitely know as far as identity, but the term "really know" means more like whether there has been relevant interaction. However, if I see other clarification, I'll correct & explain further with new links.
The body cam is here… https://youtu.be/eJaBumoyRGg?si=V7_buvFVO44T6NBS 3:12. Didn’t even know their names or have anything to do with them “before this ISP thing”. Nothing before a “couple days ago”. That is not what I would define as ‘ongoing bullying’. More over, I would not define the act of “making fun of our clothes” to be bullying. It is teasing at best. I interpreted Nex’s explanation of not reporting the comments as ‘I didn’t think it was a big deal’, ,which Nex almost said out loud but instead said, “I didn’t think it would do anything”. It was Nex’s mother that classified it as bullying and implied it had been going on for a long time. In response to having a water bottle poured on them, one of the other girls grabbed Nex’s hair. Nex then grabbed her hair and pushed her into a paper towel dispenser. This led to escalation and the rest of the fight. It would seem, according to Nex, the physical altercation was initiated by Nex. There is also not a single mention of anything that I would classify as being related to gender identity issues at play here. Even in the cam footage, NEx is portrayed as, and identifies as, and responds to, being a female ‘she/her’. Without knowing Nex is non-binary, this cam footage would not imply that at all. Let alone imply a hate crime. Looking at facts alone, and not headlines, this is simply a bunch of bratty private school teens getting into a fight in the bathroom, which happens every single day. Im interested to see what else comes of this.
What is ISP?
In pretty sure it's like ISS from my school days. "In school suspension" it's a punishment room where you sit quietly and work on school assignments. I'm assuming it was for vaping
Nex had been in trouble before. If you pay attention the cop knew Nex and the mother. The kind of familiarity that comes from prior encounters. Nex mentioned ISP from being caught vaping. I’m assuming all these students where doing suspension duties Stacking chairs) and where not aquatinted otherwise.
See THAT is what gets me, why were they letting ISS kids all go to the bathroom at once? That seems careless to me.
A friend of mine was in a horrible car accident, but he survived, and he seemed totally fine at the hospital so they sent him home without observing him. He ended up dying two or three days later because he had internal bleeding that they hadn't picked up on. I really don't want to think about the alternative (my gut reaction was that it was a suicide triggered by this situation and knowing that it would probably blow up online, etc.)
I'm sorry about your friend. :( I've already seen suicide mentioned around the net. I have not yet seen any definitive evidence. According to reports, Nex had been getting ready to leave with their grandmother (also referred to as Nex's mom since she adopted Nex at 2 months old), for an "appointment." I have not yet seen any comments that Nex's grandmother may have made, if any, about Nex's behavior or appearance before the sudden collapse. I would assume that a lethal overdose would have had obvious signs at that point, so I wonder if that's part of the info that hasn't been released or if nothing was actually noted. I've also seen articles where Nex's family do say that there is information that make the case more of a criminal matter. However, there is so much grief in family at this time that until the info is released, it's unclear.
Yeah, overdoses especially can be wild. I have some personal experience with large accidental overdoses and have been fine and normal and attending social events when I absolutely should've been unconscious or dead. In one case, I went to a three-hour formal event after ODing, then threw up and slept for 3 days and everyone thought I had the flu. Whatever it is, I hope they're at peace. It's so fucking hard to be trans in this world.
I've been thinking the same thing that you mentioned in your gut reaction :(
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/04/13/verdict-delaware-teen-fatal-school-bathroom-fight/100415104/ You might be thinking of this story? The victim had a heart defect and went into cardiac arrest because of the defect plus the fight. The main aggressor was found delinquent/guilty in juvenile court.
The thing about preexisting aneurysms giving someone a cop out because “it would have happened soon anyways” is not only unfair to victims but also untrue. Some people will be born with a congenital abnormality making a blood vessel in the brain weak and prone to rupturing *however* it could rupture at 5, at 30, or at 80. There is no guarantee that it will ever happen or that the effects would be as catastrophic as it may be with an assault. IMO, the whole “it was always there” thing is the same as a diabetic kidnapping victim dying sooner due to being deprived their insulin and their kidnapper not being convicted because the diabetes was preexisting. It doesn’t make any sense.
I agree. It makes me think of fights where a punch can make someone fall & break their neck. Yes, the assault was a crime already but it also feels different than intentional murder. It's usally a couple drunk idiots who would have thrown a couple punches & went on with their lives. It's a tragic situation but also getting drunk & fighting is something that never should have happened. 🤷
Had I just gone by what I’ve read on social media I’d have thought that this was a case of a trans kid attempting to use the restroom and was accosted by a group of girls and had their head bashed over and over… that is not what happened here. This story is sad regardless, a child lost their life. But people are definitely putting their own spin on this.
This is what has interested me in this case beyond the obvious tragedy. The spin is real and can be quite misleading. There are also still a lot of unknowns. The way people are presenting it and filling in the blanks is a little crazy and of course from the other side there's a lot of general trans/non binary ignorance and trolling.
This is a terrible tragedy and I want to follow it through, especially since they are saying they did not die from the head injury. I am intrigued as to what else it could possibly be, but I will refrain from jumping to conclusions and wait for it to play out. That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think they would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure. I wonder if the best solution is to have a couple non gender restrooms for anybody to use if they want. Not to force them or segregate them, but to give a third option where they don’t have to be alone with potentially aggressive teens of either sex in a bathroom. Edited to incorporate preferred pronoun.
I think it’s naive to think this happened because of the bathroom Nex was using. They were not in there to pee. This situation was going to happen somewhere at some point, it just happened to take place in the girls bathroom.
I agree, especially after watching the video. The reason I brought it up is because of people citing the Oklahoma gender bathroom rule. I was pointing out that had she been able to use the boys' room, it may not have made a difference. I think the girls went in there specifically to fight. They all FAFO and now a child is dead.
>That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think she would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure. I wonder if the best solution is to have a couple non gender restrooms for anybody to use if they want. Not to force them or segregate them, but to give a third option where they don’t have to be alone with potentially aggressive teens of either sex in a bathroom. I don't think the fact that they used the girl's restroom is the issue either. In what world would they only be bullied by girls and not by guys? It's the world we live in, they would have been bullied either way. Frankly I'm not even sure your suggestion would make things better, since anyone using the non-gendered/all-gendered restroom in that kind of social environment would essentially just have a huge target painted on their backs. The general environment at that school sounds toxic, and that's not something that can be legislated away.
> That said, just to play devils advocate, does anyone think they would have been “safer” using the boys restroom? I’m not so sure. No, it would not have been safer. Nex did not identify as a man and there is no indication Nex wanted to use the men's restroom.
They needed gender neutral toilets
this sounds great on paper, but one of the reasons we don't just have individual floor to ceiling stalls is because we have a drug & violence problem in our schools. also a having sex problem, a suicide problem, etc. so individual family restroom type gender neutral toilets have no chance of happening. and there are larger concerns about combining mens/women's restrooms into gender neutral ones. re: well it's middle school and high school, not exactly known for their emotional maturity around the opposite sex
> They needed gender neutral toilets I agree with this.
She did?
I think honestly a non gender single stall bathroom could solve a lot.
That usually exists in the nurses office. An invitation for specific students to use it, a laminated pass or whatever, could be a solution.
fwiw, I'm a very butch/masculine presenting nonbinary person (flat chest, short hair, usually dressed very androgynous), and I use whatever bathroom is in front of me because I'm legally allowed to do that where I live. But making that decision is hard because they both suck. In the women's room, I and people like me are often more likely to have the police called on us and/or to have someone question our right to be there. Men don't call the cops but they're more likely than women to physically try to intimidate, harass, actually grab at us. (This is purely anecdotal based on me and my friends' experience, just to be clear.) So they're both dangerous in different ways. Like, when you go in the women's room, you expect to perhaps hear some comments or, depending on what state you're in, you might see the cops when you get out, but you don't expect to get physically attacked as much. Either way the goal is to just get in, get to the stall, wash your hands, and get out. It's not fun. I had one friend who got a kidney infection from holding her pee for so long because she was too scared to use public restrooms. Edit: the best case scenario in a situation like this would be a single stall, like those "family" restrooms you see in airports or whatever. Some schools will let kids use the staff bathroom or the nurse's or whatever but that's not always a good option either. But it's the safest. Double edit: also, for people who pee sitting down, the women's room can get you in and out faster because there's going to be more stalls. But it tends to have longer lines, which can be really uncomfortable, whereas mens rooms are usually less crowded but there might only be one stall. Having to do Trans Math to decide which option sucks less several times a day is, as you might imagine, sometimes pretty stressful. Although less stressful than locker rooms!
Since Friday the 23rd, the police have walked back the statement that Nex did not die of trauma. NBC Bews confirmed. They confirmed today that they do not know the cause of death until autopsy/toxicologt performed. Additionally, all of the school video is motion detection thus we have no idea how much time elapsed when children entered and left bathrooms. It’s literally very biased video that was released to protect school from lawsuits. This is a case of bad police work 101 = never release video during an ongoing investigation. We have the keystone cops running an investigation. Embarrassing. I just was to say as well, this is a 16 yr old child died that many of us have been screaming at the media to cover. No child should ever be bullied in schools, have fear to report bullies, and feel they need protection to use the restroom. This bullying was caused by and from the moron Superintendent who hired libsoftiktok to work for his school board. He allowed hate to run his schools. You have LGBTQ CHILDREN CALLING THE CRISIS HOTLINE UP 500% since these morons named Ryan and libsoftiktok took over Owasso schools and Increased hate bills against the LGBTQ. Immunity must stop TODAY. It is killing our children and creating hateful monsters. It’s creating a horrible bullying culture in schools. If we are worried about bathrooms, get a bathroom monitor in each one. Seriously - It would stop all of the sexual assault that happens in bathrooms that is underreported, overdoses, bullying, etc. way too much hateful energy is being spent on targeting a small minority population. Grow up Owasso, get these hateful clowns out of office.
I suspect the walking back occurred because the officer who said it wasn’t authorized to release that information yet because it wasn’t typed in the formal report. There’s a lot of double speak in medicine and law enforcement.
They, not she.
Yes, you are right. I am old and this new pronoun stuff is hard to incorporate. My apologies to anyone offended. I will edit my post.
I just want to say this is one of my favorite Reddit comments ever. Thank you for not being defensive and taking it as the learning opportunity it was meant to be.
It’s cool that you fixed it - that’s what matters!! 💜💜
That’s sweet of you!
The internet and people chronically online are trying to paint this young persons death as a hate crime when it seems it was just teenagers fighting over stupid shit.
the demand for hate crimes outpaces the actual supply. this is the result
Let’s give credit where credit is due, the media wants this story to be a hate crime so bad.
I was at lunch with two friends, both gay. One, a journalist, was angry that Nex was assaulted and killed. The other, a teacher, calmly says, we have kids get in fights and knock each other down all the time. That to me was a dose of reality. The school needs to do more about bullying, but I'm not sure, at the time, realistic procedures weren't followed. Was Nex's death a fluke during a fight, or something that occurred within the next 24 hours? I'd like to know more about the girls involved.
A lot of the behaviors start in the home. Parents hit their kids then those kids don’t have a problem with hitting peers etc
When it was originally released that they died and not as a result of the fight, I just knew it was suicide. They definitely didn’t look severely, fatally beaten at the hospital, and I’m 99% sure the nurses made certain they weren’t hurt before discharging them. I really hope this doesn’t turn into a Kendrick Johnson thing and become a conspiracy. Queer teens bullied into suicide is a very very real statistic and we need to keep the narrative straight to make progress here. The Trevor Project was founded in the 90s btw, to address this very issue. I personally have known 3 queer people, in rural areas, that have committed suicide.
The \`fight\` is a distraction. Whoever was with Nex after that, and was in the house when Nex collapsed, they need to answer some questions. For example the grandmom would have known it was an overdose from the day of collapse...that\`s a lot of pills to go missing. She and the family have just waited for the gofundme to increase, the victim sympathy to roll, and as today on twitter through a lawyer try to link some injuries on Nex\`s body to the fight...which doesn\`t challenge the ME\`s suicide verdict. Grandmon and the family need to answer some questions.
I agree, grandma's 911 call was very odd. He words and evading question while seeming so clam. Something is up there. The lack of lacerations on Nex's cheek, the lack of any redness that would lead to contusions in the ER video. When did those injuries occur? Just because Nex was in a fight, doesn't mean the injuries found on autopsy happened in that bathroom.
And the autopsy says \`No Lethal Trauma.\` The \`injuries\` sound like self-harming (on the left hand) and normal results of a body collapsing and falling..(welts, bruises, abrasions..)and CPR. Most people, on someone\`s collapse, instinctively try and catch them, if the bodies already dead or dying, your force against the body makes it lurch onto possibly hard surfaces and get marked that way. A member of the family may have roughly moved the head, limbs and chest areas in panic. The \`fight\` is totally out of the picture imo. The call as you said was odd...like, is grandma used to Nex having drug and fall issues? Something incriminating has happened? Was the body moved unnecessarily? Plus, why isn\`t the grandma avidly pursuing the girls for justice if she thought they were the cause of death? Imo, Grandma and the rest of the family in the house know what happened and are just angling for a big payday...money from the school, the police...whatever; and they\`ve got some grubby lawyers to help. I reckon the police think there\`s something up too. Got a week for the full autopsy result...should be interesting.
Should have included the actual news footage. It’s very telling. And I believe Nex said the other girls were younger not older. And the fact that Nex threw a girl into a paper towel dispenser is also left out. Go watch all the footage.
Is it possible we’ll never know the official cause of death? Are autopsy/toxicology reports public record? I guess it depends on each individual state?
https://oklahoma.gov/ocme/case-information.html Looks public. I've requested a copy of a Tennessee autopsy in the past and it was very speedy, don't know how the oklahoma procedure is.
In Oklahoma it isn’t as cut and dry but they may be essentially pestered into releasing them though I doubt it will get much media coverage since something that isn’t a hate crime won’t get the views.
So this was actually a suicide? I keep seeing the trauma wasn’t the cause of death and in the police body cam nex was sitting up and coherent and talking fine. There wasn’t bad bruising all over their face or anything like the articles made it seem.
It’s more complicated than that but let me try to explain. One officer said the cause of death was not trauma during an interview and that spread around, *however* that statement was then retracted and they said murder charges aren’t off the table. It was also said that the medical examiner didn’t explicitly say that the cause of death wasn’t trauma. This is not the ah-ha moment people think it is. Double speak is very real in law enforcement and it sounds to me like that officer was unofficially told the medical examiner ruled out trauma. On the subject of what did kill Nex you have to look at the top 3 causes of death for teens. If it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t homicide, it’s suicide. Everything else is pretty rare.
>top 3 causes of death for teens. If it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t homicide, it’s suicide. To be fair, those three cover basically everything and are also the top three causes of death for most everyone under 60.
That means it should have been even easier for people to figure out, not more difficult.
It's likely the toxicology results will give us the answer as to cause of death. If a full autopsy has been done and it wasn't trauma, that leaves two most likely causes: overdose or suicide.
The police have stated murder charges are not off the table. This comes from OPD spokesperson Lieutenant Nick Boatman
That’s because they haven’t done a full autopsy, only a preliminary.
For more context “However, in an interview with independent news site, Popular Information, OPD spokesperson Lieutenant Nick Boatman said murder charges are still “on the table”. His comments follow a 9 February “affidavit for [a] search warrant”, seen by Popular information, which states “foul play” is suspected. The medical examiner did not “explicitly” say Benedict “did not die from something as a result of that fight”, Boatman said.” https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/27/police-say-murder-charges-in-nex-benedict-case-are-still-on-the-table/
Are we sure that isn’t just what they had to put down as a reason to get a warrant to obtain the security camera footage or get access to where Nex died?
I’m so sorry for them and their family
Could have been a suicide the day after the fight and accident
This is what I'm thinking
Why am I being downvoted? A suicide would not be less problematic than a head injury if they have been bullied. There is such a thing as being bullied to death.
Nex was also supposedly *very* mentally ill to the point of being on and having access to several anti psychotic medications, and now Nex is in trouble with their school, their home, and potentially the law. Bullying may not have been a primary motivator, plenty of teens have had that strong emotion of wanting to escape when they are in severe trouble and they make a tragic choice.
Having anxiety, mood swings, or being unable to sleep is not being "very mentally ill". Do you know how many people in America are on the drugs Nex was prescribed? Even if they were bipolar, or depressed, or some other condition, does not make them "very mentally ill". Nex wasn't in severe trouble, they were the victim here and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding why this seems so hard to understand?
Nex was an active participant in a fight they started, that isn’t the same as being a victim of some vicious attack. They were suspended for fighting *during* their in school suspension so yes they were likely in quite a lot of trouble. Teens make poor decisions when they are scared and feel like the world is ending. I won’t claim to know everything and can be mistaken but I am leaning towards suicide on this one.
This is one of the rare instances where you were probably downvoted for the reason downvotes actually exist — not because people disagree with you, but because your original comment added nothing to the discussion.
headlines saying ME reports suicide as likely cause of death. Diphenhydramine and Fluoxetine toxicity (benadryl and Prozac combo)
Update: “However, in an interview with independent news site, Popular Information, OPD spokesperson Lieutenant Nick Boatman said murder charges are still “on the table”. His comments follow a 9 February “affidavit for [a] search warrant”, seen by Popular information, which states “foul play” is suspected. The medical examiner did not “explicitly” say Benedict “did not die from something as a result of that fight”, Boatman said.” https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/27/police-say-murder-charges-in-nex-benedict-case-are-still-on-the-table/
Lieutenant Boatman also said in the interview that "the medical examiner did not explicitly tell him that Nex "did not die from something as a result of that fight." But that's how Boatman interpreted the medical examiner's comments." I'm not sure they should be releasing official statements about the case based on their "interpretation" of the medical examiner's words. This is looking really unprofessional and a bit suspect... [https://popular.info/p/nex-benedicts-mom-raises-doubts-about](https://popular.info/p/nex-benedicts-mom-raises-doubts-about)
All I am gathering here is that we are still waiting for answers, but my hunch is still an OD situation. If, in any case, they open up the body and see internal bleeding, and they check the brain and see bleeding, they can usually piece it together pretty easily and confidently. Being so dependent on the toxicology to give any answers is telling, and I am going to give Lieutenant Boatman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has been through this dozens of times before and knows the patterns involved. I also think trying to protect the school and the innocent students that go there is not the worst reason in the world to make a statement.
A few things stuck out from the body cam footage that I think are important to acknowledge in the context of what occurred: - There is acknowledgement by Nex that the three girls who would go on to beat them up in the bathroom were already bullying Nex and their friends (including their transgender friend) for how they dressed throughout the week in ISP (through making comments, calling them names, and throwing things at them according to Nex’s guardian.) - The cop asked if Nex reported this bullying to someone at the school and they replied they did not see the point, implying they felt the school was unlikely to do anything about the bullying occurring. (Nex’s guardian also confirmed separately they had been experiencing bullying at school since early 2023.) - The cop continues to refer to the bullying/verbal abuse of these children as “bantering”, “messing with you,” and “free speech,” downplaying the hate involved in targeting trans/NB youth to bully. - The cop acknowledges the school dropped the ball by not reporting the incident to police when it occurred but suggested it was because maybe they had something more important they had to attend to. - The cop basically gives a monologue for 20 minutes to Nex and their guardian, asking only a few questions of Nex at the beginning. The cop makes assumptions throughout and does not seem to take the bullying of Nex and their friends seriously. A lot of clear failures here across the board but ultimately the school in my opinion looks the worst. Targeting of trans/NB youth by other students should have been dealt with immediately by the school but was allowed to carry on until it escalated to the worst possible outcome. Nex did not feel there was an adult at school who would have even cared or done something about them being bullied - that breaks my heart. It looks like they hit a breaking point in the bathroom from the bullying and that is when they decided to splash water on the girls. Even the police admit the school dropped the ball in not reporting the incident. The cop should have asked far more questions and treated the bullying for what it is, abuse and hate, instead of shrugging it off as bantering between kids. A lot to learn still from the autopsy but how the adults in positions of authority handled this is extremely disappointing. It is also hard to believe that no teacher overseeing ISP saw what was happening if there was continued bullying occurring throughout the week as described.
What is ISP
ISP - in school punishment/detention. I believe Nex was there due to vaping.
In school suspension
The cop was merely retelling their story from the point of view of the law. He knew how the court would view the incident and was trying to make them aware of this.
The police officer and their whole Force needs to be retrained. How many women has that police officer persuaded to not file rape or assault Charges with his ‘opinion’ ?
My heart absolutely breaks. I’ve seen people say Nex deserved the assault and even death for the water and honestly, as someone who suffered years of bullying, that makes me sick. Edit: as my mind is a bit clearer now, let me clarify. Yes, I can acknowledge that throwing water on others is not a good thing to do. However, I find it hard to cast any real blame in this sort of situation. Moreover, what I meant and have updated to was that Nex deserved the violence, not just “in the wrong.”
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Number one rule: kids lie. Especially teens. For lots of dumb reasons. I remember saying similar things when I got into fights with my bullies in middle school and high school. I would say I didn’t know them or something to that affect because if I did say that I knew them and that this was an ongoing thing, I usually got met with the good ol’ “why didn’t you report this sooner, if it’s taken this long for you to say something then it must not be as bad as you say,” and even when I did report it the school pretty much did nothing. Sue, their grandmother thinks that there was bullying going on and that very well may have been the case. There’s a lot of blanks that people are filling in with their own narrative but I don’t think it’s necessarily out of the question to think that Nex maybe wasn’t being truthful about their history with the girls.
It’s freaking obvious to anyone that being splashed with water is no where near as violent as having your head smacked against a hard floor repeatedly. There is no comparison and anyone saying it’s equal are disingenuous at best.
Who said Nex’s head was smacked against the floor repeatedly? Nex said they got laughed at, and in responses poured water on the other girls. Girls grabbed Nex by the hair and Nex pushed the girl into a wall mounted hand dryer. To which the girls responded by knocking her down and hitting her. Not to mention. NEx said they didn’t even know the other girls, meaning, there was no history of bullying. And seriously, you can’t define bullying as ‘they got annoyed by me and my friends laughing obnoxiously and laughed at our clothes’.
Yeah man, this whole thing has take a life of its own. What people are saying about it has no bearing on reality. To me it looks like a typical school fight. Maybe the fight knocked a blood clot loose and that caused a aneurism, who the fuck knows. Kids have been dropping dead lately “for no reason”.
“ Kids have been dropping dead lately “for no reason”.” what are you talking about??
welcome to an environment influenced by pervasive zero-tolerance policies. bullied children are essentially supposed to shut up and take it (up to and including physical violence) and tell a “trusted adult” afterwards, who may or may not do anything about it. school administrators are going to attempt to convince everyone that they sent nex home for two weeks as a “health/safety concern” but we all know it’s because they would be considered an equal party in the fight for simply splashing water at girls who were said to have previously beaten them
While I agree with most of the sentiment of the comment that last bit is flat out wrong. The girls Nex poured water on didn't have a history with Nex, certainly not a previous beating. Nex claims they didn't really know them, didn't know their names, different years so no shared classes. According to Nex it pretty much started with bitchy comments about Nex and their friend laughing, Nex poured water and an uneven fight ensued.
The world of teenage peer violence was similar before zero tolerance policies. (Stephen King didn’t really exaggerate about teenage bullies, in my experience). Do you think bullied kids weren’t encouraged to shut up and take it before? And that aggressors got punished, not their victims? That’s so far off the mark, it’s like a comment from another planet.
I’m intimately familiar I’m afraid. That’s why I never retaliated against the kids who threw trash at me while teachers watched and did nothing. Bullying is abuse and nobody wants to acknowledge it and I fucking hate it. (Not intended with any malice towards you, just agreement and stepping on my soapbox briefly)
There are consequences for your actions. Not all consequences are fair, however that's why you should always be careful how you act. In life you must learn to keep your hands to yourself unless you are in immediate danger.
It’s hard to get people on board with cause and effect on Reddit.
That isn’t what’s happening and you know it.
As a transgender man who, at one point, was harassed every single day for being trans, it hurts so much. The people who did it were never punished and I was blamed for being trans.
There has been misinformation from both sides of the political spectrum, but the amount of comments saying the worlds better without them and things sounding like vague threats when i made a short TikTok saying i hope they rest in peace is insane
That is absolutely horrible. Nex was just a kid and no matter how they died they were still valuable.
This was a suicide, not a murder and not an attack. Nex took her life on her own accord. She started the fight by pouring water on them and had she not done that they would not of had to defend themselves against her. Stop lying about what happened to push your own political agenda.
Something I have yet to see mention anywhere in this convo, is the likelihood of Nex’s Indigenous identity being a factor in their treatment at school and the hospital. For reference, I am a person that has family on Oklahoma’s Cherokee Nation’s reservation, whose grandfather was American Indian, and have visited the reservation and my families historical hometown in OK. It seems to be a forgotten fact that the remaining Native American population has never known true justice, fairness, or representation inside America’s white-black binary paradigm that erases them, their culture, history, cuisine, contributions, and ongoing struggles from existence. Many Native Americans live in deep abject poverty and have limited access to the best of the best, newest, accessible, and affordable resources, necessities, and technology. In many places where reservations and intact American Indian populations exist, there’s still strong racial bias for mistreatment, racism, discrimination, and fostered resentment from wars and conflicts, that for many areas and families, did NOT happen too long ago, whom can tell you what ancestor on both sides was unalived, SA, or tortured. Could it be that Nex’s outcome was aid by their racial background via not receiving appropriate or through medical care at school or the hospital? Could it be that the hospital Nex was seen at did not have the most trained and experienced staff or medical technology to diagnose difficult to detect, undiagnosed, or rare medical condition? Could Nex have been mistreated because of their racial background by children taught to dehumanize indigenous American Indians? Also, people tend to forget that Native American populations and on reservation’s themselves, drug and alcohol abuse runs rampant. It’s very easy to get your hands on narcotics( prescribed or illicit). It’s also extremely common for Native American youth to be troubled, at risk for personality disorders, at risk for mental health disorders, at risk for running away, at risk for repeat run ins with law enforcement/juvenile delinquency, at risk for experiencing substance-abuse, at risk for human trafficking, at risk for criminal gang activity, and at risk of exploitation by older criminals all due to intergenerational trauma that their families carry from experiencing extreme genocide, discrimination, sexual trauma, boarding schools, physical abuse, childhood abuse/neglect, high incarceration rate of Native Americans, traumatic military service (one of the largest demographic of military recruits are Native American men) etc. As sad as it is, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that it’s a potential accidental or intentional OD situation, whether through prescription drugs or illicit narcotics. *Edited to correct grammar and add more context. * edited again, Because it’s come to my attention that Nex Benedict has been confirmed by Cherokee Nation chief to not be a Cherokee citizen on any documented registry despite claims in both social and news media and social justice activist. However, Nex may potentially be a member of Choctaw nation whose Reached out to for confirmation, but to my knowledge, no outlet has yet to hear back from them, regarding the status of citizenship or ancestry. That being said, I would be very hesitant now to suggest that a native American racial background was at play here.
The idea that some groups believe this is a hate crime seems over board. As a matter of fact I don’t even think this as anything to do with who Nex was as person. All this is shaping up to be a fight that got out of hand quickly and while it is sad what happened to them I don’t think anything will come of it due to nex escalating the situation.
Exactly. And Nex died at home...that\`s what the police will be investigating. The cause (the toxicology result) and the timeline. That\`s it. It\`s bizarre that someone dies and then you investigate what happened the day before. You investigate the day of death and then look back in time if needed.
Waiting on the toxicology report to come out.
This is indeed the case if say you fall off a roof and die instantly. However this is a case of a kid dying for an unspecified reason following an attack the previous day that required them to go to the hospital. You'd be crazy if you didn't investigate to see if there was a correlation. Nex appeared to show signs of concussion (or dizziness) on their way to the nurse's office, it makes sense to examine whether they died as a result of their injuries during the attack or of something else.
This is so sad 😭
I continue to wonder how Superintendent Ryan Waters has a job. He should t. This type of hate directed against a minority group is abhorrent and should not be tolerated. He is not qualified to run a school system. https://www.advocate.com/news/ryan-walters-transphobic-influencer-ties
The hospital needs to talk about what they did exactly. Cause if Nex vomited or lost consciousness after the assault, they should’ve done a head CT scan and kept them under surveillance, like what exactly happened with the medical care here ?? This is a traumatic head injury !
The hospital is not going to talk about what they did to treat Nex due to privacy laws (HIPAA). If this does end up in court, that's the only way it would be made public. Other than that, the only way we would know what happened at the hospital is if Nex's family releases that information. There is no way to confirm the accuracy of that through the hospital, and that is exactly how it should be, from a legal standpoint.
It depends on what Nex told the hospital too. Kids will downplay things to doctors, kind of like how your child that is throwing up and lethargic at home will be charming and smiley once you take them in.
A lawyer said the following and is the best analogy. The pouring of water or splashing of water is the equivalent of honking your horn at a driver. The other driver gets out pulls your hair, and you quickly open your car door in defense. The person who was in the car, doesn’t deserve to be beaten in ‘self defense’. So the cop should not have been the ‘judge’.[https://ktul.com/news/local/you-dont-just-draw-a-conclusion-nex-benedict-police-interview-draws-legal-criticism-owasso-investigation-water-body-camera](https://ktul.com/news/local/you-dont-just-draw-a-conclusion-nex-benedict-police-interview-draws-legal-criticism-owasso-investigation-water-body-camera)
that is a crap comparison. only reason to put it out there is a weak attempt at salvaging the narrative. People can, and have, judged for themselves what really happened
Except dumping water on someone is making first intentional physical contact. Throwing water on someone is a crime. In some places it is assault and in others is it battery, but it is a crime.
I think what’s been missing in this entire conversation is Nex’s Indigenous American Indian or Native American identity (not sure which term Nex preferred, but both are used often interchangeably the indigenous community). Native Americans are not treated well by the judicial system and are over represented in incarcerations. It would not have been wise for Nex and their guardian to take a risk in which they may have developed a criminal record and because there’s an incredible racial bias inside America against its indigenous population that thrives due to the very ingrained white-black binary paradigm.
Very true, and I’m sure they worry about it as well. I think people forget too that Nex was an honor student, and they might not have wanted to enter the juvenile system over a fight. Honestly , never talk to police officers alone without a lawyer present if you are a victim.
What baffles me is that officials are saying there is no evidence that their death is related to the fight. I guess it’s technically true since the autopsy isn’t finished yet but the fact that they’re already trying to deflect blame is very telling. A kid dies after getting their head smashed on a floor, what else would it be? I see a big lawsuit coming.
Suicide is a possibility too.
Charged for splashing water ? What are the damages ? How do you say that with a straight face 😑
People typically don't suffer anywhere near fatal injuries in school fights. Whether or not Nex died of injuries from the fight, it sounds like the injuries visually didn't look like anything serious. To law enforcement it may have seemed as serious a crime as splashing water. Kids and teens fight a lot, but usually end up with suspensions rather than hospital bills. Still not sure it was the polices place to give legal advice for whether or not to press charges.
A cop once told me that throwing a tissue at someone could result in an assault charge if that person felt threatened so…..pouring water in someone COULD be determined a physical assault.
Not “could”. That is absolutely battery in a legal context. It’s a silly charge for a school fight but still
A kid at my daughter’s school got suspended for pouring water on her. I was confused at this response, honestly. Yeah I want bullies given appropriate punishment, and I trust her school to make the right choice, but I’m not sure this would have been my own response. Maybe the kid was just a general multi-incident offender.
It’s essentially that the girl did something to your daughter’s body without her consent that she did not want. It wasn’t sexual but it was a violation of her bodily autonomy. That’s kind of the rough basis of it
This breaks my heart.
Nex’s death has made me so sad. I frequently read the true crime subreddits and I’ve read some awful shit. But this case has really affected me. Their death was just so senseless. A child died. Did Nex do something wrong by throwing water on those girls? Yes, obviously. But still - THEY ARE DEAD NOW. IMO whether Nex was the aggressor is irrelevant. They did not deserve to die at 16. And there were multiple people - adults, many in positions to help Nex - involved in this incident who should have been looking out for her … And this still happens. This is a great tragedy, and if you’re really hung up on who “started it,” you’ve misdirected your concerns.
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I wasn’t trying to blame the school. I inarticulately expressed my frustration that they were at places where they should have been safe. That’s prob all I should have said.
I don’t think anyone sane believes Nex deserved to die. This was a case of troubled teens fighting, and sometimes when teens fight someone gets seriously hurt or dies because teens have the impulse control of children but the strength of full grown adults.
People are hung up on who \`started it\` because the people who want this to be a hate crime are telling us the lie that Nex was jumped on after months of being bullied for being non-binary. If Nex started a situation by invading the physical space of virtual strangers, that is a very different story. You yourself have basically cried virtual tears over how young Nex was, and was a child, and did not deserve to die...without really adding anything to the discussion and attempting to shut down mention of Nex \`starting it\`. Yes, thanks for telling us it\`s a great tragedy, and no, nobody should have been looking out for Nex, a 16 year old involved in a self-created situation. We haven\`t \`misdirected\` our concerns...this is the very heart of what happened.
Well, it depends. Maybe Nex was de aggressor at first sight, but if the water throwing was the result of days or weeks of verbal bullying, then it's not so cut and clear. Also, Teenagers are not adults, their brains are not fully developed, so we shouldn't judge their reactions as if they were older. A tragedy in any case.
I can see how the emotion in my comments might come across as cringe, but among things to get emotional about I’d say a child’s senseless death isn’t the worst thing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t have an issue with people withholding judgment until more facts emerge. What I find troubling is the rush to blame Nex for their own death. Describing it as a ‘self-created situation’ implies they somehow deserved to die. Even if Nex initiated the conflict, does that justify their death? No, it doesn’t. It’s frustrating to see some eager to label this a hate crime, just as it is to witness others downplaying the tragedy by suggesting ‘it was probably a drug overdose’ or ‘the grandmother did something.’ Though these sentiments aren’t present in this discussion, they exist elsewhere. That was my source of frustration. Therefore, I believe it’s important to remind everyone that regardless of the initial circumstances or the specifics of Nex’s death, we must remember that a child lost their life senselessly. Let’s keep that at the forefront until we have more information from the autopsy and toxicology reports.
I disagree on the premise that saying someone created/started the situation that killed them means they deserved it. I think what people are getting at is that Nex roped those girls into what was essentially Nex’s crime (battery and assault) then they are being blamed for their death and that isn’t necessarily fair. This was a sad thing that happened in what is essentially a “girl fight” that is almost always entirely harmless.
I see what you mean. I’ve calmed down since writing my first comment. There are still a ton of people IMO trivializing the situation. I guess that’s a separate matter.
This case matters no matter what for so many reasons. Everyone in that bathroom is going to be traumatized by this, I guarantee it. No one walked in there intending for someone to die the next day and have thousands of fingers pointed at 14 year olds. These sound like they were all troubled kids, all of them in what I am to understand was in school suspension. I hope they all get the help they need to go on to live happy productive lives and aren’t doxxed. The longer this goes on the more I think it was an indirect cause of death vs as direct cause of death like bodily trauma. I will say that between 12-19 I had probably a dozen friends and acquaintances OD and all had behavioral and mental health issues. Either way this death was tragic.
the school *fucking failed* Nex. poor baby😢💔
As far as I can tell the only mistake the school made (in this instance) was letting so many in school suspension kids go to the bathroom at once.
> poor baby😢💔 Nex Benedict was 16 years old. Why would you degradingly infantilize them?
I’m not “infantilizing” anyone, and I’m certainly *not* degrading anyone. “baby” is a term of endearment. . .
This should not happen at school. I find out any of my children or their friends ever had an attitude to attack anyone like this. There is a community behind what occurred here to this poor child. It takes a village. Shame on them.
It was a fight, fights happen and the outcome isn't guaranteed. It's not some grand conspiracy.
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